Tolkien Tuesday: A Hobbit in Appalachia
How reading Tolkien allows me to get back in touch with my West Virginia roots.
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Welcome to Tolkien Tuesdays, where I talk about various things that I love about the lore and writings of Tolkien, whether in a chapter reading or a character study or an essay. I hope you enjoy reading these ruminations as much as I enjoy writing them and, if you have a moment, I’d love it if you’d subscribe to this newsletter. It’s free, but there are paid options, as well, if you’re of a mind to support a struggling writer. Either way, thank you for joining me!
I’m taking a little break from my chapter breakdowns to write a little about what The Lord of the Rings–and, to a lesser extent, The Hobbit–means to someone like me, the son and grandson of farmers and coal miners, raised in rural West Virginia and now living in rural Maryland. Ever since I began reading Tolkien’s works I’ve appreciated his skill at capturing the rhythms and feels of rural/agrarian life and, as I’ve grown older, I’ve returned to him again and again as a means of connecting with a life that I have grown somewhat distant from. Among other things, this has allowed me to feel a closeness to my heritage that I sometimes struggle to attain in the real world in all of its messy complexity.
I still clearly remember when my mom introduced me to the works of Tolkien. Like so many others before her, she gave me her old, well-loved version of The Hobbit first, before leading me to the sublime beauty that is The Lord of the Rings. It was one of the most meaningful literary bonding experiences we’ve ever had, and though our tastes have diverged somewhat over the years–she’s not a huge fan of many contemporary fantasy writers–we’re always able to agree on one thing: Tolkien.
In the years since I’ve read both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings countless times, but no matter how often I read them I always find something new to enjoy. During my most recent re-read (which I’ve been chronicling right here at Omnivorous), I found myself dwelling with particular relish on the very earliest chapters of Rings, in which we learn about the hobbits and their ways and the organization of the Shire. Tonally these chapters are the most similar to The Hobbit, and once we leave the confines of the Shire and its immediate environs the epic idiom becomes ever more prominent.
At first I thought that my dwelling on these chapters was a function of my nostalgia for my youth, when all of Rings felt so new and magical, and while that’s true to an extent, I began to realize that there was something more to it, that there was something about these early chapters that bore an echo to my beloved West Virginia. For one thing, I realized that there are some rather striking similarities between the hobbits of the Shire and the Appalachians that I grew up with. Much like the hobbits, people from Appalachia can be more than a bit stubborn, clinging to their old ways when faced with the new and unusual. Though both hobbits and Appalachians can be quite welcoming and loving to those who they know and who they welcome into their hearths and into their homes, they also view outsiders of any kind with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Moreover, there’s an iron strength to both hobbits and Appalachians that many outsiders tend to either dismiss or underestimate. Both groups are, in a certain way, people out of time, in the sense that they are reluctant to change unless they absolutely have to do so. They are close to the land and, though the Shire didn’t always belong to them, by the time that The Hobbit begins they have been there for so long that they seem to have sprung directly from the earth itself. If you’ve ever met a hard-bitten Appalachian, you know that the same can be said of them. And, to my ear at least, there’s a certain similarity between hobbit naming conventions and those of Appalachia, both of which tend to be, in my experience, rather earthy and homely.
The resonance for me goes deeper than social patterns, though. Whenever I read about the hobbits and their appearance–particularly the Harfoots and their browner skin and nimble hands–I think at once of my maternal grandfather, a man whose skin was a rich shade of brown from working in the fields and who never met a knot he couldn’t untie, even when his once-nimble fingers were swollen with arthritis. In a strange way, reading about the hobbits and their agrarian ways allows me to feel closer to him, even though he’s been gone for twenty years.
It’s for this reason, I think, that “The Scouring of the Shire” is as devastating as it is. Anyone who has grown up in Appalachia is familiar with the way that various industries–forestry, coal, natural gas–have butchered our hills and mountains to extract their worth before leaving them behind. These men, like “Sharkey” and his toadies, care nothing for the land or its care, nor do they care about its people. Land and people alike are just resources for them to exploit and to destroy as they like, without a care for the future. While they may not be quite as violent as they were in days past, there’s still no question of who has the power in states like West Virginia, where the fossil fuel industries–including most notably coal but also natural gas–continue to buy politicians so that their rapine and plunder can continue apace.
I remember once, when I was about 12 or 13, my parents and I drove over to my grandparents house. On the hill overlooking their homestead there was a lovely little grove of trees but, as we drove by it that day, we saw that it had been felled to make way for something for the mine. I felt something inside of me break right then, as I saw what had been done to this bucolic little space from my youth and childhood. Every time I read “The Scouring of the Shire” I think of that moment, and I curse the Sharkeys of the modern world.
Now, to be clear, I love the epic parts of The Lord of the Rings, the great battles and the conflict between good and evil, the tall and mighty warriors and their deeds of valor. I still feel a chill every time Éowyn faces down the Witch-king. However, there’s always a part of me that yearns to just re-read those opening chapters, where we get to learn about the hobbits and their ways, when we settle into this comfy little corner of Middle-earth. Perhaps, when it comes down to it, I really am a little hobbit from Appalachia.